In front, the snow is a clean white page, waiting for the words to be written.

Behind, a story of a man afoot begins to unfold.

The springer quarters ahead and when I cross her track I stop to look at the prints pressed into the powder, marred around the edges when her warm furry foot pulled at the edges of the cotton-candy snow.

I move on to clean snow, a new page.

Rooster tracks emerge from the sage, their edges sharp and intact as they race along a parallel story line to intersect with the quartering tracks of a springer.